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Apple released its much-hyped HomePod speaker to the masses last week, and the general consensus among early reviews is that it sounds superb for a relatively small device. But most of those reviews seem to have avoided making precise measurements of the HomePod’s audio output, instead relying on personal experience to give generalized impressions.

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That’s not a total disaster: a general rule for speaker testing is that while it’s good to stamp out any outside factor that may cause a skewed result, making definitive, “objective” claims is difficult. A speaker’s sound largely depends on the room in which it’s placed. Its proximity to walls, the surface on which it’s rested, whether or not you have a carpet—all of this can alter what sounds make it to your ears and thus how you perceive its performance. And no two people’s rooms are entirely alike.

But having some proper measurements is important. Reddit user WinterCharm, whose real name is Fouzan Alam, has made just that in a truly massive review for the site’s “r/audiophile” sub. And if his results are to be believed, those early reviews may be underselling the HomePod’s sonic abilities. After a series of tests with a calibrated microphone in an untreated room, Alam found the HomePod to sound better than the KEF X300A, a generally well-regarded bookshelf speaker that retails as a pair for $999.

What’s more, Alam’s measurements found the HomePod to provide a “near-perfectly flat frequency response,” meaning it stays accurate to a given track without pushing the treble, mids, or bass to an unnatural degree. He concludes that the digital signal processing tech the HomePod uses to “self-calibrate” its sound to its surroundings allows it to impress at all volumes and in tricky environments. “The HomePod is 100% an audiophile grade speaker,” he writes. The review has plenty of terminology that’ll go over the head of casual readers—it’s r/audiophile, after all—but it’s certainly worth a read for any audio lovers interested in Apple’s latest.

To be transparent: I’m in the process of reviewing the HomePod for Ars, and my testing hasn’t entirely lined up with Alam’s results. Without giving too much away, it’s largely balanced and certainly rich for its size, but the new speaker doesn’t fall into that flat category, let alone “perfectly flat.” My ears hear a slight lift in the low midrange and some missing detail in the treble, as if it’s somewhat veiled.

For now, I'd say the HomePod is certainly impressive given its natural restrictions, but I wouldn't call it an audiophile dream machine. The fact that it can't yet do stereo pairing with another HomePod doesn't help. Consumer Reports says it has had similar results, though its testers found the Sonos One to be better, and I generally disagree with that conclusion.

The takeaway from all this? It’s difficult to say what your ears will hear from a speaker until you actually use it. Still, Alam’s testing does put in the work, and the HomePod is undeniably strong—at least when it comes to sound. We’ll have our full review soon.

It’s seems that audiophiles with new iOS devices and heavy investment in Apple’s ecosystem for music are best suited for the HomePod. While everyone else outside of that will get a great speaker with lots of limitations and not very smart, smarts.

I heard a Homepod at an Apple store this weekend. It was hard to judge, but the little thing filled the area pretty well with what seemed like decent, quality sound. I’m not interested in this version of the device.

"Keeping the volume at 100% let us [trick] the Fletcher Munson curve by locking it into place. Then, we could measure the speaker more directly by sending sine waves generated at different SPL’s, to generate a frequency response curve at various volume levels. This was the only way to measure the HomePod without the Fletcher Munson Curve compensating for the sound. The resultant graph shows the near-perfectly flat frequency response of the HomePod. Another testament to this incredible speaker’s ability to be true to any recording.

"Here is that graph, note that it's had 1/12 smoothing applied to it, in order to make it easier to read. As far we can tell, this is the true frequency response of the HomePod."

Are you (at Ars) planning on doing any objective testing to confirm these results or are you just gonna go with your ears?

As you said yourself, what might sound bad to you might sound great to me but with actual calibrated equipment testing, at least we have some objective data to go off of.

I'm much more liable to believe hard data than any reviewer's subjective impression. Every single self-described audiophile I've ever met has preferences that seriously cloud their judgment with regard to actual speaker/headphone quality as opposed to style. Wayyy too much emphasis on sharp trebles is usually what I see, but there are plenty of bassheads and whatever you call people who like midrange definition.

Me? I'll be sticking with my MDR-7506 cans for the foreseeable future. If it's good enough to make the music then it's good enough to listen, too.

"Keeping the volume at 100% let us [trick] the Fletcher Munson curve by locking it into place. Then, we could measure the speaker more directly by sending sine waves generated at different SPL’s, to generate a frequency response curve at various volume levels. This was the only way to measure the HomePod without the Fletcher Munson Curve compensating for the sound. The resultant graph shows the near-perfectly flat frequency response of the HomePod. Another testament to this incredible speaker’s ability to be true to any recording.

"Here is that graph, note that it's had 1/12 smoothing applied to it, in order to make it easier to read. As far we can tell, this is the true frequency response of the HomePod."

Bring paranoid and just reading that, it's the frequency response at 100% volume. This may not be true at lower volumes when the speaker has the option to push certain frequencies it, by definition, can't at max.

Too expensive for what it provides. If I want sound quality, I will get a Bose.

For the price, Bose is a pretty bad value usually. A lot of their money goes into marketing rather than any actual quality (you can say the same for Apple products I guess, but at least with Apple you'll get a good user experience and decent quality).

EDITED: Removed the snark from my comment. It didn't really add anything useful to the conversation.

- Is the frequency response curve compensated or uncompensated? That could mean a lot of difference.

- High end audio equipment often artificially suppress the highest treble range for a more smooth listening experience. Not seeing much of this even at 15-20 khz.

- Finally, truly high-end audio equipment very rarely has a perfectly flat response curve, compensated or uncompensated. A lot of what makes some headphones sound good with vocals is tampering down on certain frequencies to reduce sibilance.

Ars continues its decline in quality. We used to get in-depth review of the inner workings of CPU architectures. Now we get this crap.

I've never purchased an apple product in my life, but this is incredibly intriguing. This person's data is interesting. If you have data to counter the reddit review, or an interpretation of the data that is different, that would be interesting.

If your ears, ears that may have been damaged or genetically insensitive to certain frequencies--or you just have bad taste in audio quality or an anti-apple or pro-whoever bias--aren't hearing accurate reproductions, that's a you problem. Not a speaker problem. And not something that's terribly interesting to read in a review.

Too expensive for what it provides. If I want sound quality, I will get a Bose.

A few words of advice: don’t ever utter that sentence at places like avs forum or the audiophile reddit page, you will likely get laughed out of there, the takeaway being there is far better speaker to be had for less money, with the exception being headphones. With that out of the way I’m very interested in the author’s upcoming review and how it pans out; I’ve heard that Siri is more of a hinderance than a help but the speaker portion is solid. I’d be curious as to how these would go against a Home audio or stereo system due to the high WAF (wife approval factor) that the HomePod likely has. No one can underestimate the WAF, trust me.

On the one hand, yes, absolutely. Removing the human from the loop removes as much bias as possible. On the other hand, ultimately (as a home consumer, not a lab tech) I buy what sounds nice to me, not what necessarily has the flattest response curve.

I think it could be argued that double-blind human testing (preferably with a pretty large sample) is a better test for home audio products, even if it is necessarily less objective.

YMMV, I'll sit over here and listen to plainly crappy speakers that sound Good Enough for my own usage.

What strikes me is how few people directly compare HomePod to Google Home Max.

How about to the Nexus Q? I mean, sure, that was "just" a high quality speaker with direct integration to Play Music and sharing features but it was a damn fine speaker for $300. It could potentially even have been updated as Google expanded their digital assistant into the home and become more than "just" a high quality speaker.

Too expensive for what it provides. If I want sound quality, I will get a Bose.

No /s gets you the downvotes for ignorance you deserve.

There is exactly one thing where Bose and quality go into the same sentence: noise cancelling headphones or earbuds for the time period up to and including 2017. Starting now, the underlying (Qualcomm?) chip used for noise cancelling has been upgraded and Bose has no monopoly on it. We are likely to see other people match them because you simply have to use the new chip and max it’s capabilities while making a better quality product than Bose.

Any other Bose product you purchase is demonstrably not the best or even the “quality” choice.

Ars continues its decline in quality. We used to get in-depth review of the inner workings of CPU architectures. Now we get this crap.

I've never purchased an apple product in my life, but this is incredibly intriguing. This person's data is interesting. If you have data to counter the reddit review, or an interpretation of the data that is different, that would be interesting.

If your ears, ears that may have been damaged or genetically insensitive to certain frequencies--or you just have bad taste in audio quality or an anti-apple or pro-whoever bias--aren't hearing accurate reproductions, that's a you problem. Not a speaker problem. And not something that's terribly interesting to read in a review.

Did you read.. No, you didn't.

The last three paragraphs of the article are telling you about Jeff's forthcoming technical review.

But do feel free to keep bringing down Ars' quality with your poorly researched comments.

What strikes me is how few people directly compare HomePod to Google Home Max.

How about to the Nexus Q? I mean, sure, that was "just" a high quality speaker with direct integration to Play Music and sharing features but it was a damn fine speaker for $300. It could potentially even have been updated as Google expanded their digital assistant into the home and become more than "just" a high quality speaker.

Too expensive for what it provides. If I want sound quality, I will get a Bose.

Not sure what universe you live in where "sound quality" and "bose" coexist in the same sentence without mutual annihilation.

In fairness, it could be one where sound quality is defined as "the sound I like" - which isn't an unreasonable one when paying for an expensive experience.

Similarly, cook your own steak however makes your mouth the happiest, because you're cooking it for you (although please do try a different doneness at least once before you turn that poor piece of cow into a hockey puck).

The hardware engineering is beyond a doubt impressive for the size. The high excursion woofer with the internal mic listening to it is able to do about what a 5.5" regular driver is.

It's the mostly being useful for Apple Music that gives me pause though. If you have this near a home theatre setup, you pretty much need another sound system anyways, since Apple TV is what could airplay to it and even that pairing isn't great (go back to music and you have to re-pair after). I'd love a larger version of this with home theatre inputs, now that would really slay.

I think it could be argued that double-blind human testing (preferably with a pretty large sample) is a better test for home audio products, even if it is necessarily less objective.

In the arguments I've had with audiophiles, they all universally dismiss double-blind human testing as inherently flawed. Their reasoning is that because a true double-blind test tends to produce speakers that sound good in lab conditions, it's useless when trying to find a speaker that sounds "best" for your specific listening environment. If your $200,000 home setup with oxygen free diamond cables and thought-controlled wooden volume knobs and magic rocks sounds better to you, then it is better.

I get it—it makes sense, from a certain point of view. But it also means that arguing over objective sound with that kind of person is utterly impossible, because wallet-based biases and "well, now that I spent ten grand on that new cable, I absolutely hear a difference!" audio placebo effects mean there are no true objective parameters around which to base a comparison.

On the one hand, yes, absolutely. Removing the human from the loop removes as much bias as possible. On the other hand, ultimately (as a home consumer, not a lab tech) I buy what sounds nice to me, not what necessarily has the flattest response curve.

I think it could be argued that double-blind human testing (preferably with a pretty large sample) is a better test for home audio products, even if it is necessarily less objective.

YMMV, I'll sit over here and listen to plainly crappy speakers that sound Good Enough for my own usage.

Seems to me that there is no more objective way to test a speaker’s sound than blind testing with humans. Everything else must necessarulily be an inexact proxy, trying to arrive at the same conclusion.

None of this is going to change who is going to buy the HomePod. The proposition has always been limited and this doesn't change it.

If you don't have Apple Music, this speaker isn't very interesting (I know AirPlay, etc...). Even if you have Apple Music, it's only appealing to a percentage of users who need a bookshelf speaker for music (and are willing to pay for extra for quality).

I might buy it when I get my new place (I might buy 3-4 for whole house audio), but I don't see this as a big product.

I've been thinking about getting some AudioEngine A5s plus an Airport Express. I don't care about Apple Music or talking to Siri, but I care very much about AirPlay and sound quality. Sounds like the consensus is that HomePod is a viable alternative in this price range?

On the one hand, yes, absolutely. Removing the human from the loop removes as much bias as possible. On the other hand, ultimately (as a home consumer, not a lab tech) I buy what sounds nice to me, not what necessarily has the flattest response curve.

I think it could be argued that double-blind human testing (preferably with a pretty large sample) is a better test for home audio products, even if it is necessarily less objective.

YMMV, I'll sit over here and listen to plainly crappy speakers that sound Good Enough for my own usage.

IMO it really depends on whether you're a stickler about truly eliminating placebo and signaling effects from your audio-related spending. Maybe you are paying for sound that isn't "neutral", or even a placebo effect, or just pure value derived from signaling. So what? That particular spending is no more irrational than putting nice chrome rims on your car.

So you can either stick to the data and recognize that 99% of the time, your own experience is going to deviate from what the data tells because we are meatbags susceptible to various tricks our minds play on ourselves. For me, it's much more enjoyable to simply experience things for what they are and spend my money on what sounds good to me.